Students 'freak' out over dirty dancing ban / Principal says some moves are too explicit

Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Friday, February 21, 2003

Reigniting a debate already burning from the days of Jelly Roll Morton, Elvis Presley and 2 Live Crew, Palo Alto High School has decided to try to regulate sexually explicit dancing at school events.

Good freaking luck, students say.

"Freaking" -- bumping and grinding to the rhythm between couples, threesomes, foursomes and moresomes -- is the current flavor of a type of dance that a jazz-era writer Carl Engel described as "an unloosing of instincts that nature wisely has taught us to hold well in check."

But while it holds the same ability to freak fogies out as the Charleston and Twist did in their day, Palo Alto Principal Sandra Pearson said the new style had at times gotten so explicit that some parents had complained, saying their children were too uncomfortable to come to the dances, and the parents themselves were too uncomfortable to chaperone.

So after meetings between the director of student activities and the student council over the past two months, a new set of rules were promulgated in the Paly Reporter, the school newsletter: No chewing gum at the dance. No bottles. And "Dancing must be appropriate for a school function (no demeaning or sexually explicit dancing)."

The same warning will be printed on tickets for tonight's dance, Pearson said.

"I believe the 'freak dancing' is inappropriate for a school function," Pearson wrote in the newsletter. "(I've been told if you don't know what it is,

The same newsletter noted the school would be exploring random drug testing for alcohol and drugs, as well as continuing backpack and handbag checks. But it was the ban on explicit dancing that freaked students out the most and left some vowing they would eschew tonight's school dance.

"Freaking is something you can't do anything about because people in high school are horny," said junior Nili Ben-Meir, 16. "If you put them in a dark room with music we like, we're going to freak. We're not going to waltz."

(Let it be noted that the waltz was considered somewhat scandalous in its day, a historical point often used by students opposed to bans on freaking.)

Junior Rob Gerleman, 16, agreed, saying he couldn't see paying for a dance when he couldn't move the way he wanted, and he darkly warned that students might choose to sneak off to dance as they want in some uncontrolled dark corner of Palo Alto, a suggestion echoed by parent Mary Bartenikewoski, 47, and her son Wolfe Price, 16, a sophomore.

"I don't think you can regulate that kind of behavior," she said. "I mean, they're not having sex on the dance floor -- and if they were, that would be a problem. But if they try to ban it, they're just going to want to do it more."

However, Pearson said, the suggestion that the school is "banning freaking" is an overstatement. The dance style itself will not be verboten, she said, just the more extreme examples of the form.

You know it when you see it, Pearson said, and apparently students know it, too. At past dances, students engaging in the most extreme dancing would quickly stop when an adult approached.

"Work with us," she said to students Thursday. "We don't want to have to get down to defining very bluntly, for example, you are not to be emulating sexual intercourse."

Failure to follow the new guidelines will be met with a warning, Pearson said. Repeat violators may be asked to leave the dance, and severely defiant students could risk suspension -- a weapon Pearson said she did not expect to need to wield.

And if nobody comes to the dances, Pearson said, well -- that would be a shame.

"We want to have dances continue, and I'm saddened by the schools across the country where because they couldn't control it, they stopped having dances, " she said. "I really wanted to work with students."